Control, Punishment and Victims

What are the four categories that the aims of punishment can be put into?

• Deterrence

• Incapacitation

• Rehabilitation

• Retribution

What is Deterrence?

Primary aim is to discourage the general population from engaging in criminal behaviour by using the punished individuals as an example

• focuses on discouraging the punished individual from committing future crimes by making the punishment unpleasant enough to deter them personally

What is Incapacitation?

To protect society from the offender by physically removing them from the community

What is Rehabilitation?

Aims to reform and reintegrate the offender into society as a law-abiding citizen

What is Retribution?

Based on the concept of ‘pay back’ - idea that the punishment should be proportionate to the severity of the crime committed

• expressed in religious texts such as the Bible and Qur’an as ‘an eye for an eye’

What do Functionalists suggest as the role of punishment?

Durkheim - punishment as a necessary and functional purpose (VOS)

• reminds members of societal values

• maintains social order

• preserves social solidarity

According to Durkheim, what is the role of punishment in an Traditional Society?

Retributive Justice

• little difference and diversity between individuals = strong collective conscious is produced: “social mores”

• when collective conscience is offended, vengeful passion motivates the punishment - expressive: means of expressing outrage

Visible punishment is vital in protecting these social mores

According to Durkheim, what is the role of punishment in an Modern Society?

Restitutive Justice

• society is more specialised and individuals have different roles and skills (division of labour) - crime damages this inter-dependence of one person on another

• aim is to restore things to how they were before the offence was committed - to restore society’s equilibrium (balance)

• however, punishment still has an expressive element

Usefulness of Durkheim’s perspective on Punishment

• laid a foundation for understanding the role of punishment in society

• his theories oversimplify the complexities of social order, neglect power dynamics, assume shared values, and may not adequately consider to protection of individual rights

What do Marxists suggest as the role of punishment?

Althusser - Punishment is apart of the Repressive State Apparatus

• way of physically controlling the working class and preventing them from challenging the power of the capitalist class

Thompson’s (Marxist Historian) example of the Repressive State Apparatus

18th Century - Punishment such as hanging and transportation to colonies was part of a “rule of terror” by those who owned land (bourgeoisie)

• issued these punishments to poachers and those who stole from their lands

• possible because imperial states like Britain had colonies all over the world to send criminals too (e.g. Australia)

• criminals could work in these colonies producing more wealth for the imperial powers

According to Rusche and Kirchheimer, what is the nature of punishment regarding Economic Structures?

Nature of Punishment reflects the economic needs and power relations within a given society - Labour Market and Punishment

• rise of capitalism and the development of a wage-based labour market - penal system underwent a transformation

• contended that the capitalist system required a disciplined and flexible workforce

• prisons based on timetables, isolation and accepting hierarchical discipline - all norms that operate in factories

Punishment reflects the needs of the production and the labour market rather than any notion of justice - punishments change from bodily harm to depriving people of freedom

Usefulness of the Marxist’s perspective on Punishment

• Garland criticised Marxism - too focused on economic determinism: overlook a number of other factors that have influenced the changing nature of punishment such as ethnicity

• Perspective does not sufficiently account for variations in legal systems, crime rates, and punishment practices across different capitalist societies - e.g. some capitalist countries still use punishments such as the death penalty where as others do not

What does Foucault suggest about the birth of prisons?

Claimed that there were two different types of power that have been developed through time

• sovereign power

• disciplinary power

According to Foucault what is Sovereign Power?

Pre-modern societies - monarch ruled and punished people’s bodies for crimes

• crimes seen as personal acts against the monarch and so punishment was a reminder of the monarch’s power

• punishment was a public spectacle such a public execution

According to Foucault what is Disciplinary Power?

Modern times - punishment is not just about exercising power over the body but also the mind

• e.g. Panopticon Prison design

• doesn’t think bodily punishments disappeared because society became more civilised - rather that surveillance became a more efficient “technology of power”: effective way of controlling people

What is the Panopticon Prison design?

A prison design where the guards can see into prison cells and thus prisoners, but the prisoners cannot see out to the guards

• prisoners must assume they are being watched at all times and so consequently discipline themselves

Foucault - disciplinary power has dispersed to other institutions in societies like factories, workplaces, schools - indue conformity from the threat of being watched

Usefulness in Foucault’s Perspective on Punishment

• Garland - criticises Foucault for neglecting the role of the state and legal institutions in shaping punishment

• Goffman - critiques Foucault’s ideas about total institutions - emphasises the role of face-to-face interactions and the micro-level dynamics within institutions

What is Garland’s theory of Punishment and Prisons?

Claims to demonstrate how the state seeks to reassure the public that crime is under control

• Penal Welfarism

• Culture of Control

• Popular Punitivism

• Mass Incarnation

• Transcarceration

What is Garland’s idea of Penal Welfarism?

Emphasises the historical shift from rehabilitative approaches to punitive measures in response to crime

• Brief period of emphasis on rehabilitation and social welfare within the penal system

This has now changed to a culture of control

What is Garland’s idea of Culture of Control?

Shift away from earlier forms of social control

• societies moved away from a focus on rehabilitation to a culture that priorities risk management, surveillance, and the containment of potential threats through various forms of control

What is Garland’s idea of Popular Punitivism?

Growing demand for harsher punitive measures in response to crime

• public opinion influences political decisions leading to more punitive policies

What is Garland’s idea of Mass Incarceration?

Manifestation of the culture of popular punitivism

• black Americans only make up 13% if the US population but 37% of the prison population

Result of a deliberate decision to impose whole groups of the population and indicates a move away from penal welfarism to ‘tough on crime’ punitive populism

• ‘war on drugs’ policy in the US led to a ‘limitless supply of arrestable and imprisonable offenders’

• Downes - also has ideological function: prison system soaks up around 30-40% of the unemployment, making capitalism look more successful

What is Garland’s idea of Transcarceration?

Claim that many people live their lives in a ‘culture of control’

• moving through systems like care to young offenders’ institutions, mental hospitals etc

Usefulness in Garland’s Perspective on Punishment

• UK there has been a growth in ‘diversion’ policies - attempt to divert offenders away from prison: e.g. curfews, electronic tagging, ASBOs

• These policies sometimes have the opposite effect and divert more young people into the criminal justice system: e.g. young person fails to meet the conditions of their ASBO - risk facing a custodial sentence

• Too focused on Western experiences, may not adequately consider the global variations in penal practices and policies: e.g. Scandinavian Countries, penal welfarism is still dominant

What societies did Foucault locate?

Disciplinary Societies - characterised by the organisation of vast space of enclosure

• individuals never stop passing from one closed environment to another

• prison serves as the analogical model as all the other institutions are based on its design of the panopticon

Always the possibility of people in these institutions being watched leading to discipline themselves

According to Deleuze what societies do we now live in?

No longer live in this ‘disciplinary society’ but rather we have moved to a ‘society of control’ institutions have stopped exercising their power over us by enclosing us in one place

• no longer restrained by enclosures structures - appear to be free, but we notice how it diffuses ‘responsibility’ throughout life

• expected to be responsive to demands of work even away from the office - “freed” from the enclosed workspace, the demands of work come to pervade all of our time

What is a Synoptic Society according to Mathiesen?

Today’s media saturated society, the media, as well as allowing the few to see the many, allowing the many to see the few

• ‘everyone watches everybody’

What is the effects of a Synoptic Society according to Thompson?

Powerful groups are now scared of the media’s surveillance of them as damaging information about them might be revealed - form of social control over their behaviour

• public monitor each other - warn others in an attempt to promote self-discipline

How does McCahill criticise the idea of an Synoptic Society?

Bottom up scrutiny might not always be able to reverse ‘hierarchies of surveillance’ as anti-terror laws, police powers etc have the ability to confiscate camera/phones etc

What is Surveillance Assemblages according to Haggerty and Ericson?

Surveillance technologies now involve manipulating virtual objects (digital data) in cyber space rather than physical bodies in physical space

• technologies are now combined e.g. CCTV footage is combined with facial recognition software - ‘surveillant assemblages’: moving towards a world where data from technologies can be combined into a ‘data double’ of the individual

What is Risk Management according to Feeley and Simon?

“New technology of power” operates through CJS

• focuses on groups

• prevention

• uses calculation of risk

e.g. Airport security checks on known offender “risk factors”: age, sex, religion, etc - gives each person a risk score

• aim is to predict and prevent future offending

What is Risk Management according to Lyon?

Surveillance engages in ‘social sorting’ - people are categorised and treated differently according to the level of risk they pose

• leads to ‘categorical suspicion’ - people placed under suspicion of wrongdoing by simply belonging to a social category or group

What is Risk Management lead to according to Lewis?

2010 of West Midlands Police - introduce new counter terror scheme in two Muslim suburbs of Birmingham

• 150 ANPR cameras in the area with the result of making the community feel like they were being placed under suspicion

What is the result of Labelling and Surveillance?

Acting on stereotypes - leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy

What is Labelling and Surveillance lead to according to Norris and Armstrong?

“massively disproportionate targeting” of young black males for no other reason that their membership of that particular social group when it comes to CCTV operator focus

• judgement based on typification’s

• result in self-fulfilling prophecy

Victim Patterns - Males

• 70% of homicide victims

Victim Patterns - Females

• 60% victims killed by partner/ex

• 31% intimate violence

• most likely to be victimised by an acquaintance

• 10x more likely to have reported sexual assault

• most likely to be killed by a friend or acquaintance

• less likely to be overall victims of violence

• more likely to experience repeat victimisation

Victim Patterns - Ethnic Minorities

• Much more likely to be victims of hate crimes

• Macpherson Enquiry - institutional discrimination

• more likely to experience secondary victimisation

• more likely to be young and unemployed

What do Positivist Victimologists focus on?

Focuses on individual factor which increases the rate of victimisation

What are Miers’ key ideas of Positivist Victimology?

• Aims to identify the factors that reproduce patterns in victimisation

• Focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence

• Aims to identify victims who have contributed to their victimisation

According to Wolfgang, what is Victim Precipitation?

26% involved victim precipitation (victim triggered the events leading to the homicide: e.g. they used violence first)

• often the case where the victim was male and perpetuator female

How does Brookman strengthen the Positivist Victimology approach?

Importance of victim-offender relationship

• interpersonal victimisation

• matter of chance of who becomes the victim

How is the Positivist Victimology approach criticised?

• Ignores wider structural factors influencing victimisation: e.g. poverty & patriarchy

• Victim blaming: Amir - 1 in 5 rapes are victim precipitated (no different from saying the victim derserved it)

• Ignores situation where victims are unaware they are a victim

What do Critical Victimologists focus on?

Structural causations of victimisation

• conflict: Marxists & Feminists

What are the key ideas of Critical Victimology?

• Structural Factors - patriarchy and power: powerless groups at greater risk

• State’s power to apply or deny the label of the victim - ‘victim’ is a social construct

According to Tombs and Whyte, what is Denial of Victim Status?

Workers die or are severely injured due to employers failing to abide by health and safety laws - normally explained away as ‘accidents’ or the fault of ‘accident prone workers’

• not given victim status!

What is the Ideological Function of the Denial of Victim Status?

Concealing the true extent of victimisation and its real causes - hides the crime of the powerful and denies it powerless victims

• hierarchy of victimisation - powerless are most likely to be victimised, yet least likely to be acknowledged by the state

How is the Critical Victimology approach strengthened?

• Valuable in drawing attention to the way that ‘victim’ status is constructed by power and how this benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless

How is the Critical Victimology approach criticises?

• Disregards the role victims may play in bringing victimisation on themselves through their own choices or their own offending

How do Right Realists believe we should tackle crime?

• Situational Crime Prevention

• Environmental Crime Prevention

According to Right Realists, what is Situational Crime Prevention?

Strategies that increase the risk and reduce the opportunities for crime

• based on rational choice theory - offenders weigh up risks and rewards

• e.g. target-hardening, CCTV, alarms, surveillance, target removal, ‘designing out’ crime

New York - Situational Crime Prevention

Toilet sinks in New York bus terminals were changed to deter loitering, drug use and washing of clothes by the homeless

Strengths of Situational Crime Prevention

• seen as practical and cost-effective for reducing specific types of crime

Criticisms of Situational Crime Prevention

• doesn’t tackle root causes (poverty, inequality, socialisation)

• criticised for causing displacement e.g. Spatial, Temporal

According to Right Realists, what is Environmental Crime Prevention?

Addresses the physical conditions that might encourage deviance - signs of disorder and to be tackled

• signs of disorder encourage further crime as levels of informal social control break down

• e.g. zero-tolerance policing, rapid repair of vandalism, and visible policing

New York - Environmental Crime Prevention

Subway trains were not allowed to depart before graffiti was removed

• transit police began enforcing a ban on turnstile jumping at rail stations and there was a crackdown on ‘squeegee men’

Strengths of Environmental Crime Prevention

• Evidence where policies in New York were successful - 50% reduction in homicides

Criticisms of Environmental Crime Prevention

• accused of targeting marginalised groups (e.g. Operation Swamp in Brixton 1981) causing a breakdown in relations with the police

• over-policing of minor offences

How do Left Realists believe we should tackle crime?

Social & Community Crime Prevention

• aims to address social and economic causes of crime through long-term strategies such as improving education, housing, youth support, and employment

• often involves early intervention and community partnerships and collaboration

The Perry Pre-School Project - Social & Community Crime Prevention

• well-qualified teachers (master degrees)

• good student, teacher ratio

• maths, literacy

• control group - 50% lower crime rate

Those who attended the Perry Pre-School projects when research in adulthood showed: fewer arrests, higher levels of education and better employment outcomes

Criticisms of Social & Community Crime Prevention

• solutions tend to be expensive and long-term - the positive effects may not be seen for years